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By Inquirer MANILA, Philippines--Diosdado Macapagal spent his vice presidency campaigning non-stop, because President Carlos P. Garcia wouldn't give him a job. Back then, the basic unit of our government was the barrio, and Macapagal never hesitated to boast that he had visited nearly every barrio to shake hands with nearly every voter. To be sure, obsessive attention to voters, in retail and wholesale terms, is the mark of any successful politician. But Macapagal's personal touch proved incapable of overcoming the challenge mounted by Ferdinand E. Marcos, who believed above all else in the ability of political machinery to overcome all odds. Marcos renamed the barrio the "barangay," and this latter-day rajah ensured that the barrio captain of old would become the barangay chairman of today, the petty "datu" on whom money is periodically showered by Malacañang. Marcos distrusted the traditional party machines and wanted to build personal ties between his supreme chieftainship, and the village chiefs he created and made dependent on his good graces. It is no coincidence, then, that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo governs with a combination of her father's retail obsession and Marcos' wholesale penchant for bribing all opposition into submission. She roams the country with her father's zeal and holds cash buffets in Malacañang in a truly Marcosian manner. At the apex of the patronage pyramid, she knows as well as her legionaries in the House of Representatives do, that the bedrock of their shared political machinery are barangay officials. Which is why the true story of the recently concluded barangay elections is that they were about cash, political infrastructure, or, put another way, providing for the future of the President and her people. By now we are reasonably certain that the congressmen and governors plied with cash in the Palace a few weeks ago were lining up for doles they could give out, in turn, to their barangay machinery. The supposedly nonpartisan nature of barangay governance be damned. It was payback time. The President owed the congressmen, who owed the barangay officials, in turn. All would pay their debts, since after all, payment would come in the form of public funds. To repeat: The barangay elections were a partisan exercise, with partisan goals in mind. Instead of giving adequate time for the reform of the obviously flawed and highly corrupt barangay system -- including, as we pointed out, the essentially useless, except for dynasty-building, Sangguniang Kabataan (Youth Council) -- the President solidly supported the insistence of the House of Representatives to go through with the elections, despite the Senate's initial reservations. Nothing would be allowed to delay the payback. The first dividends were immediately encashed by the President when she showed that more congressmen supported her than her erstwhile ally, Speaker Jose de Venecia. Then we saw it in the way governors tried to gang up on Pampanga province's Gov. Ed Panlilio, who exposed the cash distribution in the Palace. We will see in the coming months, the additional dividends the President expects to earn from her cash buffets, whether in terms of blocking a new impeachment effort or in simulating grassroots support for Charter change. Everything -- the lavish spending on posters, marching bands, motorcades, the violence and intimidation, the bribing of voters -- that has characterized the barangay polls is as nothing compared to what they represent. They are part of a continuing and increasingly brazen process of governing, not in the exercise of the will of the people, but according to the Golden Rule that whoever has the gold, makes the rules. With a new generation of young dynasts in the Sangguniang Kabataan, with their fathers, mothers, uncles and in-laws in more senior barangay positions, with the congressmen having paid off their local leaders' debts and by so doing, incurring new debts of gratitude and themselves grateful, in turn, to the President, everything is in place. Ritual calls for barangay reform will be made, and even if they have become an exercise in futility, we support those calls. However, we should all be aware that the entire political class benefited from this exercise, and this is what sets apart their interests from the broader public.

HERE'S Amando Doronila's take on the results of the May polls. Excerpt from his column piece "Acting as if nothing happened":

MANILA, Philippines -- The first thing the opposition did after it appeared certain that the Genuine Opposition (GO) candidates had won 8-2-2 in the Senate election was to talk with deposed president Joseph Estrada, at his detention home in Tanay, Rizal, about the division of spoils. Up for grabs are the Senate presidency and chairmanship of key committees. From newspaper reports, there was nothing to indicate that the victors, in the flush of triumph, thought of overhauling the national policy agenda beyond just carving up the booty. The celebration with Estrada was symbolic and symptomatic of the opposition's view of the mandate it received from the people on May 14. When the opposition leaders met at Estrada's rest house, they offered the GO capture of the Senate as a trophy to Estrada and as an acknowledgment of Estrada's view that the election was a referendum on the illegitimacy of his overthrow by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in January 2001 and a vindication of his innocence of plunder charges. The opposition cannot be more wrong than crediting Estrada for the GO victory in the Senate election. Some of them may like to think the GO team was handpicked by Estrada. But this was not exactly the case: most of the GO candidates were not identified as dyed-in-the-wool Estrada partisans, and presented themselves as independent-minded persons. The only thread shared by members of the team was that all were anti-Arroyo. The May election was anything but a rerun of the Estrada-Arroyo political vendetta. That feud was not the central election issue. The voters decided on a number of issues that have emerged to define the character of the Arroyo administration since 2001. The nation has traveled a long distance for the past six years. Consequently, Estrada cannot claim credit for influencing the 8-2-2 Senate election result. Much less is he in a position to call the shots in the allocation of power in the next Senate.

CHECK out Philippine Daily Inquirer editor John Nery's latest post in Current, the joint blog he maintains with Inquirer columnist Manuel Quezon III. Here's an excerpt:

Sometimes we can read too much into the "meaning" of a particular vote. I found Raul Pangalangan's last column, on the meaning of the Honasan-Trillanes vote, a provocative read. I especially thought this particular passage was right on the money.

By manipulating the various arms of government to harass its enemies and protect its own, the Arroyo government has weakened the rule of law. It has conditioned the people to look to end-results � stop corruption, improve education, expand health care, make housing more accessible � and be indifferent to the means, constitutional or not. It has lowered the bar, so to speak, that the law has placed to guard against extra-constitutional power grabs.

This weakening of the rule of law � "culture of impunity," anyone? � must be counted as one of the main legacies of the Arroyo administration.

I AM happy that the Inquirer keeps credible columnists like Randy David, Walden Bello, Solita Monsod, MLQ III and a lot more. What I don't understand is that amid the scholarly written articles, there comes Ramon Tulfo writing about the newly elected governor of Pampanga, Father Ed Panlilio, whom he thought was losing in a fair battle. I'm really vexed at the thought that the Inquirer also keeps rotten tomatoes like Ramon Tulfo in their newspaper. Quoting his post:

Priest-turned-politician Eddie Panlilio should shut up if he can't prove his allegations that his closest rival, Board Member Lilia "Baby" Pineda, committed fraud in the Pampanga gubernatorial race. As of this writing, Pineda had widened her lead over Panlilio, with the incumbent, Gov. Mark Lapid, coming in third. (Panlilio was proclaimed the winner last nightâ€â€Å"Editor) Panlilio should stop being a crybaby and admit that he lost in a fair fight. He is barking up the wrong tree since Pineda is not the incumbent. I'm not saying Lapid cheated, but the sitting official usually has the capability to cheat because of power and machinery.

Now, who should shut up? Thank you for telling Father Panlilio to stop being a crybaby, because as of the moment, all his tears are of joy! And who are you to say that Baby Pineda has no capacity to cheat? Come on, I am from Pampanga and I really don't know if you live here. Mr. Tulfo, I think you're the one barking at the wrong tree; anyway, dogs really do that sometimes. The next time you write about the results of elections, see to it that you have correctly seen the COCs. What gave you the idea that Baby Pineda won? Strange, really strange. I will just wait for the apology that you will address to Father Ed. Learn your lesson. Thank you. -- Raffy Punzalan Simbol, Arayat, Pampanga

HERE'S an excerpt from Neal Cruz's Philippine Daily Inquirer column piece:

MANILA, Philippines - This is it, the moment of truth! Today is the time to exercise your right to choose your leaders. Go to the voting precincts and vote for your candidates. Choose the candidates who you think will serve your community best. Don't sell your vote. The candidate who offers, directly or indirectly, to buy your vote is no good. He is not yet in office and he is already violating the law. If you vote for him and he wins, he will do more of the same. He will bribe his way through life. He is corrupting you. He is one of the persons who cause so much corruption in our government. And he is one reason you and many others are suffering.

If you accept his offer, you yourself will be violating the law. The law punishes not only the vote-buyer but also the vote-seller, that's you. For a few hundred pesos you will spend a number of days in jail. You will have a prison record, a blot on your reputation for as long as you live. You will be called a "jailbird, an ex-convict." All for a few hundred pesos, which would be spent and gone by tomorrow anyway. And you will have that nagging guilty feeling for the rest of your life.

Check out INQUIRER.net's Eleksyon 2007 running account.

SHOULD the Commission on Elections release the names of party-list nominees? Philippine Daily Inquirer opinion columnist Raul Pangalangan weighs in on this issue. Here's an excerpt from his column piece:

The Comelec is convincing in the abstract: Why, indeed, ask for names when the party-list is the antidote to the politics of personalities? Yet, the Comelec is downright crafty in the concrete: Can we trust Malacañang not to foist bogus party-list groups? When we have heard a Garci conspiring to fix the polls with that certain "Ma'am" with a distinctively raspy voice? When the canvas of the party-list votes is nationwide and is therefore most vulnerable to "dagdag-bawas" [vote-padding and vote-shaving], especially in Garci-land? Kilosbayan, Akbayan and Bantay Katarungan (and allow me here to disclose that I chair Bantay Katarungan) impugn the authenticity of the voices uttered by the dubious groups. The elections are so near, but we must not allow these fly-by-night groups to get away with it. One, we dilute our right to suffrage unless we vote knowingly. This isn't a card game where the trick is to hold the cards close to one's chest. This is a democratic election, for god's sake, not a poker table.